The minimalism of this 1982 offering by Hans-Joachim Roedelius even extends to the cover art, where it seems the the artiste himself did the honors with a blue fountain pen. “Offene Türen” [“Open Doors”] consists of a dozen, brief compositions that roam all over the stylistic map, surprisingly.

Bureau B | GER | CD | 2012 | BB127

#15 • Roedelius: Offene Türen GER RM CD [2012]

Abenteuerliche Begegnung

Besucher Im Traum

Mitt Offnem Visier

Von Osten Her

Der Sieger

Auf Der Höhe

Allemande

Spiegelung

Husche

Stufe Um Stufe

Zeremoniell

Wende

This album begins deceptively, with the ambient abstraction of “Abenteuerliche Begegnung” [“Adventurous Meeting”] which takes at least 90 seconds of an incredibly slow fade up before the melodic theme of dread and anxiety makes itself apparent. One can’t help but feel that this music is foreshadowing an incident of tension on some unknown soundtrack. The second cut, “Besucher Im Traum,” [“Visitor In The Dream”] doesn’t slacken the foreboding vibe at work here. For the time being, one can imagine that the doors that are open that Roedelius references all lead to an unhappy occurrence.

The appearance of rhythmically driven music on track three comes as something of a shock when it happens. Full blown rhythm box on “Von Osten Her” [“From The East”] then takes the album further across a wide stylistic gulf from the point where this album began. “Der Sieger” [“The Winner”] stakes out a territory of synthetic chamber music that remains a leitmotif for most of the remaining tracks. Only on “Husche” does the mood vary from the cheerful Apollonian mood that cuts a wide swath through the middle of the album. The rhythmic dripping of what sounds like water is accompanied by a technological heartbeat and some evasive lead patches touched with dub.

There seems to be few traits uniting this collection of music apart from the relative downplaying of much overdubbing. The bulk of the compositions are modern chamber music with minimal overdubbing. On the more atmospheric tracks [“Husche,” “Abenteuerliche Begegnung”] an attempt to invest the songs with many layers of sound. truly, the one uniting concept here is simply the synthetic palette that Roedelius employs. Though some of this touches on pop, folk, or soundtrack tropes, at its heart, this is a crystalline album of modern chamber music. Its brevity fulfills the first rule I established in this dirty business called “Show;” always keep ’em wanting more. Better still, the more this is played, the more I want to play it.